The failure of modern-day politics can be traced to the abject failure of the State, the overarching political construct. Consequently, anarchism emerges as the only coherent political philosophy.
In his recent article, “Strategic Alliance between India and the US Begins to Materialize,” dealing with an impending arms deal between the US, Pakistan and India – the latter two “natural enemies,” one is inclined to say, but hey, why should that stop us while there’s dough to be made? – Sekhar raises an interesting distinction. He speaks of “rogue states.” On the one hand, our own being cited as a prime example, and forms of government on the other (again, ours being billed as the most democratic of the bunch.)…
Article comments
26 - Mark
Gotta go with Ruvy and Chris. You won't find the like of us trying to be all just n' shit.
27 - Anarcissie
I think the government-state distinction is a useful construction, a way of looking at things. One might say the state is the shell of the government.
My historical myth is that government began as an agreement between property holders, especially slavemasters, to recognize and defend one another's property (an ongoing and laborious task, since others desiring property may attack property-holders and the property itself may revolt or run away) and to band together with them in attack other property-holders outside their association. In this stage of social development the government was simply a social instrument of war and coercion which acted directly at the behest of and in the interests of its rulers. If there was a state it was the same as the government.
As human communities became territorially permanent and complex through the development of agriculture and industry, rulers would find it advantageous to surround themselves with permanent institutions and relations of social control, for example they might order their higher-ranking subjects into marriages and families. (The word family comes from Latin famulus, meaning a household slave.) Multiple layers of property in land and buildings could be set up. Certain religious practices would be officially instituted and supported by the rulers, partly to placate the gods and partly to bemuse the lower orders. From these, offical arts could be developed. Money might be invented and the rulers would see the profits in issuing it and controlling it. Trade in certain goods could be monopolized. Taxes, fees, tribute could be exacted upon private transactions. Along with these arrangements, usually associated with the religious institutions, would go an ideology which declared that such things had always been and always would be, and were good. In general, the people would now subject themselves 'peacefully' and 'voluntarily' to the rulers; force, the explicit intervention of the government to coerce compliance, would be required only on special occasions (although it might be exercised for entertainment as well). This social structure, outside the explicit government, along with the government, could be called 'the state', status in Latin, 'the way things stand'.
Complicating this picture is the fact that humans in or out of states live in dense social networks and have always done so since before they were humans. In order to enhance its grip on a community, the state organization conflates itself with many of these relations. For example, as noted above, states have constituted a state form of marriage and family, which would overlie and obscure the natural bonds between lovers and between parents and their children. These bonds could then be regulated and used to further attach people to the state structure. As a result, while governments are seen (rightly) as foreign, adverse bodies, states may be misidentified as the community, the society itself.
In any case, the state developed to the point of making totalitarian claims on all of its constituents and the territory they inhabit, although it was many centuries before it could really enforce that claim.
The distinction becomes important in the modern world industrial world, where non-governmental state institutions like corporations can be used as an alternative to overt government, thus partially masking the exercise of ruling-class power. Nevertheless the state is based on and imbued with the power of the government to coerce through its ancient instruments of violence, terror and fraud.
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28 - roger nowosielski
An incisive and detailed analysis, Anarcissie, far beyond my own skeletal presentation. What you’re offering, in effect, is an archeology of the concept.
The myth you speak of is of course the myth of “social contract” and different variants thereof, as per Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, and it’s a convenient way of imagining the formation of the State from humble beginnings. What you’re arguing for, in effect, that somehow, somewhere along the line, a kind of formalization was required in order to transform an administrative body from its main function of acting as a dominant protective agency/association to a full-blown apparatus known today as the State, Mind you, though, we can’t speak of a government just yet, not in these early, formative stages, for do to so is to already presuppose the existence of the State as an institution, so closely associated those terms have become in modern-day parlance, Besides,” the government” is a rather fickle concept because governments themselves are fickle and subjects to change, but the institution of the State remains,
By formalization I mean a corporatism of sorts, a process of embodying an institution with certain qualities " such as personhood, for instance, as exemplified by the concept of the corporation - , it was likewise with the formation of the State concept, conceivably as an antidote and a counter measure to the power and the influence of the Church. Just as the individual churches were established during Paul’s travails throughout the Greek peninsula, so it was with the institution of the state, as an antidote perhaps or a counterweight to the power and influence of the Church, the institution. Something along those lines, I’m inclined to believe, took place.
Welcome to BC, BTW. The quality of the articles isn’t exactly comparable to that featured on the pages of Truthdig, but I think you should find this site challenging enough to raise thought-provoking questions. And just as Truthdig, you shall find that we, too, are populated by all sorts of personalities, good, bad and indifferent. I’m certain you shan’t have any trouble navigating this site or making informed decisions as to who is and who is not deserving of response. My next project, to bring Shenon into the fold. I haven’t quite given up on her.
29 - roger nowosielski
Amend first sentence, second paragraph, to its completion as follows: - "for the purpose of endowing it with certain powers."
30 - Anarcissie
I'm not giving the usual referents of 'state' and 'government' a lot of ontological status. The most primitive deals between slavemasters might have been ad-hoc and only gradually have come to be seen as permanent institutions. For me, my somewhat artbitrary distinction between government and state is most valuable in penetrating the rhetorical thicket cast up by modern capitalist institutions in which gigantic, powerful corporations are said to be 'private' and are (falsely) said to be distinct from what I call the state.
In the modern world, religions which are established by the government or even given favorable tax breaks and corporate status are part of the state. The curious position of the Roman Catholic Church between the end of the Roman Empire and the rise of modern nation-states in Europe as a sort of superstate, or one might say ghost of the Empire, seems to be unusual in other times and places.
31 - roger nowosielski
I have less of a problem, Anarcissie, discussing this topic than the concept of class. I think you're underestimating the importance of the transition from ad hoc arrangements defining the conditions of societal dominance and economic exploitation to a full-blown development of an institution which makes those conditions a way of life. Institutionalization of a practice carries grave consequences,
I'm also skeptical of your ready-made identification of statehood with capitalism - and this in fact is going to be my main thrust in what's to follow, It's "statism" to be sure, but statism comes in a variety of forms, and capitalism is just one of them. Socialism is another, and so is fascism. All are hybrids, different versions of statism.
It's for those reasons, mainly, why I consider the institution of the State is being a primary one, more primary, perhaps, than that of capitalism itself.
Marx may have had it wrong. While he same the demise of the capitalist system as a means to the withering of the State, the actual relation may well run then other way. The State must go before capitalism can be put away.
32 - Anarcissie
My history of the world shouldn't be taken as comprehensive, but rather as a little fable illustrating what I mean when I use the words government and state.
Capitalism as we know it did not appear until the late Middle Ages, when strong national states began to come into existence.